Pandora's Box: The Deleted Scenes
by Kimmeth
Summary: What it says on the tin! The bits of PB that simply didn't fit with the rest of the story. Enjoy! DISCLAIMER: No recognisable characters etc belong to me.
1. Chapter 1

**Pandora's Box: The Deleted Scenes**

**One**

**(From Chapter Eight)**

"_For the last time!" howled Alison. "Will you sit still and stop fidgeting?"_

_Constance gave a long drawn out sigh and one final agitated paw at her hair before folding her arms crossly, her face the picture of irritation._

"_I still don't see," she said pointedly, "why all this is strictly necessary for a night at the pub."_

"_Honestly," said Alison, rolling her eyes as she began to unwind rollers from Constance's head, ignoring the small yelps that her friend gave on having her scalp tugged in what felt like several opposing directions all at the same time. "Have you learned nothing from all the many, MANY hours I have spent tutoring you in the art of allure? Evidently not. A witch should always look her best, Connie, whether she's going to the ballet or to the local pub."_

"_But the pub is full of alcoholic septuagenarians with nothing better to do than waste the remainder of their significantly shortened lives by eating pieces of processed pork and attempting to score higher than twenty-six on the quiz every Wednesday."_

"_Yes, and they wouldn't do that had you not set a precedent by scoring forty-nine out of fifty on the first try."_

"_That was only because the quiz-master wouldn't accept Gwendolin Pottle as the first woman to travel into space." Constance sniffed emphatically. _

"_I don't think that Raymond is familiar with legendary broomstick-flying accidents of the eighteenth century," remarked Alison. "That's possibly why he didn't think that Gwendolin Pottle existed."_

_Constance was not mollified by this and continued to fume quietly over her defeat at the hands of the limits of non-magicians' general knowledge when Alison began spritzing her newly-created curls with hairspray. _

"_Alison," she began._

"_Be quiet," snapped Alison, "I'm concentrating here."_

"_Alison," Constance continued regardless, "I really don't think that hairspray smells all that healthy."_

"_Here's your hairspray Ally," called Harriet, another of their flatmates, as she tossed a can through the open kitchen doorway into Alison's hands. "I borrowed it earlier, hope you don't mind."_

_Alison looked at the can in her hand, puzzled. _

"_But if that's the hairspray…" She paled, and Constance snatched the offending can from her grasp to read the label and discover just what had been sprayed so liberally over her head. She caught the three letters G-L-U._

_Whilst not the first woman in space, Alison Meriweather was certainly the first woman to end up there without any visible means of propulsion… _

_**Raymond is the quiz-master at my local pub. Hi Raymond, if you're reading…**_


	2. Chapter 2

**Pandora's Box: The Deleted Scenes**

**Two**

**(From Chapter Nine)**

_Tony pushed Constance down again as she tried to struggle away from his heavy weight pinning her to the bed. _

"_Tony…" she managed to splutter, pulling herself away from his amorous attentions for a moment before his lips began to molest her own once more. "Tony, you really don't want to do that."_

"_Oh, I do," growled Tony, a flicker of something that Constance had not seen before flashing through his expression. It was truly wicked, on the point of pure evil. He wrested her legs apart where she had been keeping her knees pressed tightly together and threw himself against her once more. Constance closed her eyes and prepared for the worst, summoning up the voice in her throat to scream loud enough to bring help from somewhere, anywhere. But nothing happened. Before Tony could continue his lascivious desecration of her body any further, there was a loud metallic clang and he disappeared from contact with her completely._

_Gingerly, Constance sat up and opened her eyes. Tony was bent double at the end of the bed, his hands grasping his groin tightly. _

"_What the hell was that?" he asked, all of the malice that he had evidently intended to put behind the words being lost as he expressed himself at a pitch slightly above that of a surprised soprano. _

"_What the hell was what?" asked Constance innocently, movement flooding back into her limbs where she had been paralysed with fear before. She manoeuvred herself off the bed and took a few steps backwards towards the door and freedom. _

"_That!"_

_Before Constance could reach the door, Tony had released his grip on his credentials and lunged at her, catching the bottom of the borrowed dress and ripping it from hem to waistband. He took a step back at the sight that he was confronted with. Constance shrugged._

"_You were the one who wanted to see what was underneath my dress," she said sweetly. "And you can't say that I didn't warn you."_

"_What is it?" he asked, blanching as he clutched himself once more._

"_My chastity belt."_

_Tony hit the floor with a blood-curdling thwack, this revelation clearly proving too much for him. Constance felt no obligation to check for a pulse, taking her chance to escape whilst she had it and running out of the flat and back towards the halls of residence as quickly as she could. _

"_You're back early," commented Alison as she ran through the door. Constance looked down at the ruined dress and muttered a hasty spell to repair the damage before entering the kitchen to the inquisitive eyebrows of her friend. "How's Tony?"_

_Constance thought back to the position that she had left her pursuer in and fought back a smile. _

"_Oh, don't worry. He's holding his own."_

_**Thank you NCD, NCD'S mother and Mel Brooks…**_


	3. Chapter 3

**Pandora's Box: The Deleted Scenes**

**Three**

**(From Chapter Fourteen)**

Algernon materialised in the London dusk, taking a few moments to gather his thoughts after the sudden transportation. The process of finding the trail left by Constance's own disappearance was a comparatively simple one, but once she had continued her journey on foot, he would not be able to follow her by magic and would have to rely on his own eyesight and common sense to tell him where she had gone, and neither of these faculties were Algernon's strong point. He stepped out of the alley where he had appeared and looked around his foreign surroundings. For a moment he thought that he had got the trail wrong and had ended up on a completely alien planet, but then he caught sight of Tower Bridge in the distance and satisfied himself as to his whereabouts. The bridge, he decided, would be the perfect vista from which to try and find Constance – a quick spell to conjure some extremely powerful binoculars would soon overcome the problem of his eyes deceiving him.

There was, Algernon found as he hurried down the streets of the city, just one problem. Algernon had never before visited London, and his navigational skills were sub-par at the best of times. He was sure that all the road signs were taking him in completely the opposite direction to the one in which he needed to go and as such he nearly found himself walking under a bus in his desperation to keep the bridge – which seemed to be getting further and further away – in his sights. After walking in and out of a subway entrance three times without realising that he was not actually advancing anywhere, Algernon decided that he was going to have to admit defeat.

In the words of someone, possibly related to Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that any man in possession of a shoddy sense of direction must be in want of a map. Unfortunately for the male of the human species, there is something ingrained in his genetic make-up that makes it impossible for him to buy a map without suffering extreme embarrassment and an acute sense of failure; a failure to master the mental Sat-Nav that all men believe themselves to have been born with.

It was for this reason that it took Algernon nearly half an hour to buy a map from a small 24 hour kiosk in Tower Street tube station, and a further hour and a half to negotiate his way from the kiosk to the bridge itself, a journey that the average tourist could undertake within a few minutes. Upon reaching the bridge, Algernon was about to accept the heart-sinking realisation that he was going to have to further navigate the perils of the capital to find Constance when he saw something that made his heart do a triple loop-the-loop of joy. Constance was standing in the centre of the bridge looking rather stiff and cold, her expression one of utter contempt.

"Where on Earth have you been?" she exclaimed on seeing Algernon hurrying towards her. "Some knight in shining armour you are."

Algernon quickly hid the A-Z behind his back, but his action was not swift enough, and Constance rolled her eyes.

"Next time," she muttered, as she reluctantly allowed Algernon to take her upper arm and guide her off the bridge, "Davina's coming to rescue me. At least she's got sense enough to ask for directions if she's lost…"

_**Come on, we were all thinking it – Algernon is hardly the world's most obvious saviour…**_


	4. Chapter 4

**Pandora's Box: The Deleted Scenes**

**Four**

**(From Chapter Fifteen)**

Davina looked down at Amelia's sleeping form, now convinced that her friend was past the worst of her illness. Whatever Constance had done, it had saved the headmistress's life, and Davina didn't know how she would ever be able to repay the deputy for the sacrifices that she had no doubt had to make. Constance's previous acquaintance with the Devil was something she had made extremely clear that she did not want to share with the world at large, and as such Davina dreaded to think of the terrible price that Constance would have had to pay in unpleasant memories if not physical repercussions.

As Davina moved through the castle in search of her own bed and what little respite might come with it, although she doubted that sleep would be forthcoming, she reprimanded her imagination for scaring herself with flights of fearful fancy, summoning up ever more awful situations, ever more unpleasant recompense that the Devil would demand in return for restoring Amelia's health. Davina knew that she would not have been able to take the deputy's place had she been incapacitated in the same way as Amelia, and she was on the verge of working herself into a full-scale panic attack at the thought of Constance having disappeared never to be seen again. After she had been gone for a time deemed by all to be 'too long', Algernon had disappeared off to investigate her whereabouts, but that accounted for little with Algernon's general lack of common sense. Davina thought it highly likely that he would end up run to ground going round and round the Circle Line on the London underground and not getting anywhere. Tiptoeing quietly along the corridors so as not to wake the girls, Davina forced herself to think of something different: tap-dancing porcupines, Della's chocolate fudge cake, the lights in the lab that shouldn't have been there …

Davina stopped and did a double-take. No, the candles in the lab were definitely flickering, and since their mistress was most definitely absent, they were most certainly not meant to be there. Suspecting foul-play afoot, at the very least something worrying on the part of Fenella and Grizelda, Davina crept down the staircase and pushed open the lab door, left on the latch.

The sight that greeted her was not one that a witch of her years would have expected to come across in the middle of Cackle's potion laboratory.

Constance was sitting calmly at her desk, accompanied by a young man. What made this highly irregular spectacle even more unusual was the fact that whilst Constance was fully clothed, the man was wearing little more than a pair of black boxer shorts printed with little red horns and tails.

"Constance, what are you doing?" asked Davina incredulously.

"I would have thought that was perfectly obvious," said Constance, indicating the cards in her hand. "We're playing poker. Tony, this is my colleague Davina, Davina, this is my ex-lover Tony."

Davina and Tony nodded their acknowledgement of each other.

Constance laid down a royal flush of diamonds and sat back with a rather satisfied smile playing over her lips.

"To the victor the spoils, Tony dear. Hand them over."

_**Well, we know from Inferno that Constance is a secret cardsharp…**_


	5. Chapter 5

**Pandora's Box: The Deleted Scenes**

**Five**

**(From Chapter Seventeen)**

Fenny looked into the cauldron that Grizelda was stirring. Whilst their idea to brew Ambrosia Nex as a means of possibly defeating (or at least incapacitating) the Devil had been, Fenny thought, an inspired one, she was not quite sure if her friend was going about the delicate process in the right way.

"Griz…" she began. "I'm fairly certain that it's not meant to be green."

"It is," Griz assured her. "See, it's there in the recipe: the potion should, at this point, be a clear forest green, the colour of vervain tea."

"Yes, I understand that," said Fenny. "But that potion is not the colour of vervain tea."

Griz looked into the cauldron, and she had to concede that her friend was right. The potion was a thick, opaque concoction with the consistency of wallpaper paste, and it was the colour of the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz. Despite this being Fenny's favourite film (she was a strong believer in the theory that the witch had never actually died and was in fact running a Travelodge at Woolley Edge in Wakefield), the vibrant hue was beginning to unnerve her a little.

"Well, we'll just have to risk it." Griz shrugged. "I mean, Miss Cackle always said that it's not the right words, it's the right feelings."

"And what, precisely, are the right feelings for a potion to poison the Devil?" asked Fenny, raising an eyebrow.

"Well…"

"And I think that particular theory only applies to spells," Fenny continued. "Look how many potions tests have been bodged thanks to the application of one drop of nail varnish remover too many."

"Which idiot put nail varnish remover in her potions test?" asked Griz incredulously. Fenny said nothing, avoiding her friend's eyes. "That was probably the reason why it bodged in the first place."

Before Fenny could think of a comeback, the potion began to bubble ever more violently, and the two ex-pupils took a step back from the cauldron instinctively.

"You know, I really don't think it's meant to do that," said Griz.

Fenny said nothing in reply, instead choosing to dive under the desk as the cauldron exploded with a resounding splat. She looked up at her friend, hair smoking from the blast and face dripping with green goo. For a moment, she was confirmed in her theory that Elphaba Thropp was still alive and well.

"Fenella? Grizelda? What on Earth has happened here?"

Fenny peered over the top of the desk to see Miss Hardbroom standing in the doorway, no doubt alerted by the miniature conflagration.

"Well… It's rather a long story, Miss…"

_**I can just see HB in the fairy outfit as Galinda… **_


	6. Chapter 6

**Pandora's Box: The Deleted Scenes**

**Six**

**(From Chapter Twenty-One)**

There was the familiar scrape of wood on wood, and Constance's heart leapt to her mouth as she realised that Fenella was going through her underwear drawer. Heat flooded her usually pale face, and Grizelda was just opening her mouth to express her exasperation on the effect that this discolouration had had on her make-up when she was prevented from speaking by a low wolf-whistle from the other girl.

"Fenella Feverfew, drop those knickers now!" she exclaimed. Fenella raised an eyebrow at the unintentional innuendo laden in the words but complied with Constance's request, dropping the black lace item back into the drawer and taking a step back, still staring at the contents with a mixture of what looked to be half-fear and half-admiration. Constance cast a spell to shut the drawer, the satisfying thwack that it gave as it slammed back into place enough to set the entire dresser rocking.

"Fenella," she began, a little shakily, folding her arms as the younger witch flinched at the sound of wood creaking, "we have rules for a reason…"

"I wasn't aware that investigating teacher's wardrobes was against any rules," muttered Fenella, turning back to face the livid deputy.

"It is actually," said Grizelda, not looking up from the stash of make-up on the dressing table as she waved a small pamphlet decorated with the Cackle's logo at Fenella. "Number one hundred-and-twenty-seven: Ex-pupils do not and will never have the authority to go rummaging through the underwear drawers of the senior staff."

"You actually made a rule about that!" Fenella exclaimed.

"It was a late addition," mumbled Constance. "When you two arrived."

For a moment there was a heavy silence in the room, broken only by Grizelda's muted cursing on being unable to find a particular shade of lipstick.

"But why didn't you tell us?" Fenella eventually said.

"Why didn't I tell you that you weren't allowed in my private drawers?" Constance responded incredulously.

"No…" Fenella cast an awed glance back at the offending receptacle. "Why didn't you tell us you were a moonlighting Ann Summers rep?"

_**Well… No, I honestly can't say what inspired this one. **_


	7. Chapter 7

**Pandora's Box: The Deleted Scenes**

**Seven**

**(From Chapter Twenty-Three)**

Amelia could feel herself moving forward into the strange indigo cloud, so much like the one that had hung over the school at various intervals during the past hours. Her mind was moving towards the sound of Davina's voice, up through the levels of sleep and into full consciousness.

"Amelia!"

The voice seemed sharper, closer. She was nearly there, thought Amelia, willing herself forward despite the fact that she knew she was not physically moving anywhere.

"Amelia!"

Davina was speaking to her directly in her ear now, the words almost deafening, not deadened by the unknowable barrier between her and the waking world. Could it be possible that she was trapped within her body, her mind alert but her limbs unable to move? Amelia scanned her surroundings desperately, her consciousness looking for some route, any route, by which she could escape from her semi-paralysed state. Something caught her mind's eye to her left, and she followed naturally to see a small black-and-white creature looking up at her inquisitively.

It was a porcupine.

The fact that a porcupine had invaded her dreams for no apparent reason was odd enough in itself, but it was exacerbated by the fact that this particularly spiny mammal was wearing what appeared to be black lace-up tap shoes on its hind legs. Amelia blinked. Why was there a porcupine here in this mysterious, swirling lilac wonderland? What had she been thinking of before she went to bed? What had been in that miniature camembert she had been nibbling on before she lay down for the night? She had been going through the strange behaviour of her deputy as she had dropped off, wondering what could have happened to Constance to make her so on edge at the receipt of a, what Amelia now knew to be, deceptively simple letter. But something else had pervaded her mind just as she descended into slumber. Davina had talked about a dream in which she was teaching porcupines to tap dance, and in the true magic spirit of enquiry, Amelia had been trying to divine what such an apparently arbitrary dream could possibly mean for her scatterbrained friend.

"Amelia!"

This time Amelia reacted proactively to Davina's clear, fluting voice; her head turning automatically to the source of the sound and finding herself face to face with Davina, who was surrounded by several other porcupines, all wearing tap shoes and some adorned with skirts and sweat-bands as well.

"Come on Amelia, you're late for the lesson!" exclaimed Davina. "Altogether now, from the top."

From nowhere, a gramophone began to play thirties swing music, and Amelia found her feet moving out of her control as she tapped and jumped in time with the porcupines, under direction from Davina's baton.

The sooner she woke up from this dream, the better…

_**Well, I had to make SOMETHING of Davina's porcupines. **_


	8. Chapter 8

**Pandora's Box: The Deleted Scenes**

**Eight**

**(From Chapter Twenty-Seven)**

Caroline flopped forward onto the kitchen table, her eyes closed.

"What have you done?" shrieked Della, meaning to lunge across the room towards the Devil, feet in fluffy slippers ready to spring. It took both Mildred and Constance to hold her back.

"No, Della, remember what happened last time," panted Constance as the younger woman struggled against her captors, growling all the time. She had never seen the usually mild-mannered bookbinder so enraged, excepting one incident in which rather a lot of her precious stock had been damaged. Della instinctively grimaced at the memory of the incident that had taken place that morning and touched the bandage round her head. "We don't want you back in A & E six hours after you left it."

The thought of being eaten alive by the charge nurse of the local accident and emergency department seemed to calm Della down considerably and she sat back in her chair, glowering at the Devil through narrowed eyes.

"It's alright Della," said Amelia, who had been checking Caroline's well-being. "She's just asleep."

To illustrate this point with impeccable timing, Della's mother gave an earth-shattering snore, causing the gathered witches to clap their hands over their ears. Della gave a wry smile.

"Oh yes," she said. "She'll be fine." The young woman looked at the Devil with an expression of butter-wouldn't-melt. The demon himself looked to be in physical pain at the volume of Caroline's snores.

"I suggest…" Amelia began, but she could not make herself heard over the intermittent snorts from Caroline's mouth, which was hanging open on the table and now drooling slightly. She shook her head and raised her hands in a gesture of defeat.

"Tony," said Constance with a sigh, "you're going to have to reverse the spell if we want to continue this argument."

The Devil rolled his eyes, a gesture that would have been a lot more effective had it not been for his fingers in his ears.

"Let me finish this first," he mouthed, and Constance peered round the edge of the table to see what he was doing. Upon divining the task that was distracting him, she brought her hand to her forehead in despair. The demon had a plate of cream crackers in his lap and was using his tail, a long, red, pointed protuberance usually kept well-hidden within his trousers, to spread them with cream cheese…

_**It's a long story… Someone mentioned the Devil having a tail, then a couple of photoshopped pictures of Michael Sheen followed, and this was the result…**_


	9. Chapter 9

**Pandora's Box: Deleted Scenes**

**Nine**

**(From the Epilogue)**

All was quiet in Cackle's Academy. The girls had gone home and only the staff were left, locking up and securing the draughty building ready for the long holiday. Mr and Mrs Tapioca-Blossom had finally returned home from Italy, the reason for their delay being the untimely eruption of Mount Etna causing an ash cloud to drift over Rome, where it had stubbornly stayed for a week before dispersing and allowing planes to fly again, although Mrs Tapioca was certain that the witches could have done something to aid them in their predicament.

Amelia had just sat down with the last cup of tea of the academic year when there was an unseemly creak from somewhere in the overhead region, causing the gathered women to look up and search, unsuccessfully, for its source. Davina, as melodramatic as she usually was, came to the conclusion that the ceiling was about to cave in and that they were all going to die, and as such retreated to the safety of the cupboard, although Amelia still did not know, to this day, why the elderly witch assumed that such an action would protect her from worldly destruction.

"I think it's coming from your room, Constance," said Imogen, absently stirring her tea with a fork, the teaspoons having been packed up by Davina earlier in the day in case of hapless burglars.

Constance rolled her eyes and muttered something under her breath. Amelia couldn't quite catch the gist of her speech but it sounded to be something along the lines of 'why is it always me?'

"There's only one way to find out," said Amelia, rising from her chair, but Constance had beaten her to it and disappeared. Another ominous creak followed this dematerialisation, and Amelia and Imogen ran from the room and up the stairs towards Constance's bedroom. On their arrival, they found a singularly unusual sight.

Standing in the middle of the room, holding up the red gown that Della had gifted to Constance, was the young woman who had visited them the previous year in the aftermath of the events in the ninth circle.

"Hi!" Kimmeth waved exuberantly before looking pointedly at the dress that she was holding. "Damn it, it's too big for me." She narrowed her eyes at Constance. "Do you have to be so tall?"

Constance opened her mouth to protest but Kimmeth waved her aside.

"Still," the young woman continued. "You should see the kind of things I've got in store for _The Last Stand_." She gave a somewhat evil laugh. "I'll try and take this in to fit me. I was quite proud of my creation, even if I say so myself."

With that, she folded the dress over her arm and hopped out of the window onto the waiting broomstick before speeding off into the distance, leaving the staff looking at each other, slightly shellshocked.

"You know what this means, don't you," said Imogen, her voice full of foreboding.

"Indeed I do," said Constance. "At some point in the near future, we are going to find our lives in danger from the perils of silk and chiffon once more…"

_**He he he…**_


	10. Chapter 10

**Pandora's Box: The Deleted Scenes**

**Ten**

**Bonus Mini-Scene**

She was his. Finally, after all those months of waiting, years of waiting, she was his, and he was going to enjoy it. She had come to him of her own free will, and this time there was to be no escape. He pushed her back down onto the bed and lowered his body onto hers, leaning in to take the kiss that he had been denied for so long, leering as he saw her eyes close in terrible anticipation of what was to come. She could not thwart him now, not at this late stage. His ultimate prize, and…

Beep beep. Beep beep.

The Devil cursed as his alarm clock resounded through the bedroom, pulling him sharply from his reverie.

Damn. So close.

_**Well, that concludes the deleted scenes for Pandora's Box! Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond my control (IE mad exam stress causing writer's block), I am going to have to delay the posting of The Last Stand, the final part of this epic trilogy, until the beginning of June, but I hope that you will be able to hold out until then! **_

_**And until then, I bid you adieu and happy reading!**_


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